The reduction is simply network management, the same as all of Verizon's other plans that don't have a stated throttling limit. The reduction only lasts for the period of the heavy congestion, the same as AT&T's "deprioritizing" under certain conditions. The FMCA deal is a good one for those that need VZW's more extensive coverage, although the price is only guaranteed for year. It still may be worth joining FMCA though.

This a great deal, even better then Verizon's own unlimited DATA plan, I signed up for the FMCA plan.

Verizon unlimited data plan for 3 lines (2 smart phones and a MiFi) would cost us $160 and I would be throttled at 10GB.

This plan cost $49.99, our current Verizon phone bill is $80 with 4GB of data. Now for $129.99 (current plan + FMCA pla) we have 25 GB before throttle! A saving of $30 a month and 2,5 times more data. I think we save even more as there are no fees with the FMCA plan.

I don't know of any carrier that offers "unlimited speed", including yours, and every one that even lists a speed always prefaces it with "up to"...

True, but I have never signed up for unlimited data. My home plan has the speed up to 10 mbps promise and it is never slowed down. My cell phone contract is 2 gigs a month and then it is slowed down. I would not sign up for unlimited data because there is no such thing.

What ever works best for your situation of course. So far, in the 5 months we've been using our AT&T 4G/LTE plans, we've yet to find any place it hasn't worked. Just in case though, we do have a couple of grey market $5/month unlimited data 3G only VZW Jetpacks that will get the job done, albeit not all that fast.

In addition to the phone service benefit, membership in FMCA offers many other advantages. Visit FMCA website for information In July of this year the membership requirements to FMCA my be expanded to include all type s of RV's not exclusively class A's as has been past membership criteria.

I enjoy the peace of mind knowing that if hubby can't drive rig due to medical issue, I can get a driver to take rig home. FMCAssist.

I did too (yesterday) but decided to call them today and got signed up over the phone. I'm in the July 21st shipment batch. They stopped taking sign ups via their website and I doubt you will get a call back.

Yes, it's for data. I don't understand the relationship between the VZ hotspot and using your phone as a hotspot. Could you elaborate?

I know it sounds confusing, this is what I understand;

You can still use your phone as a hotspot but it counts against your Verizon phone contract data usage. The FMCA plan is separate from you phone contract. You cannot add the MiFi device to your Verizon phone contract (technically you can but that defeats the FMCA plan) and cannot add your phones to the FMCA plan. Your phone contract has no relation to your FMCA data plan, it is a plan from FMCA using the Verizon network. You pay FMCA, not Verizon like you do with your phone.

My setup would looks like this: Phone with Verizon (For others this could be a AT&T or other plan) that I will scale back to 3GB/mo as the lowest data rate because I would use my phone as a hotspot only in very rare occasions. So I pay Verizon for this plan.Hotspot with FMCA, connecting up to 15 WiFi devices (Connect your phone's WiFi to it also like you are at home regardless of which provider you have) The hotspot is like a wireless router you have at home but is connected to the phone tower instead of a physical broadband cable or DSL phone line. I pay FMCA for this plan.

With the above setup it works like this: When i use my phone for incoming or outgoing calls it uses my phone plan with whatever phone provider I have. When I use my phone to connect to the internet I use the FMCA plan but I have to make sure I'm connected to the hotspot or at home to my wireless router. When you'r phone is not connected to a hotspot or wireless router you pay your phone provider for the used data.

Other things to note is that the price of the FMCA plan is a set price, there is no tax or other fees (There is no $20 per line fee for example). The data you can use is unlimited but may slow down after 25GB is used depending on the tower you are connected to. In contrast, the original unlimited Verizon plan will throttle down after 10GB regardless of congestion, that is a big a difference with the FMCA plan. There is no contract with the FMCA so if you decide to end your plan you can do that any time and the MiFi hotspot is your to keep (a $199 value). In case you end the FMCA plan you can add the MiFi to a Verizon contract but when you like the unlimited data you probably pay more and are subject to throttle after 10GB

Hope this will clear up the complexity a bit and sorry if I have beaten a dead horse but this was to make it easy to understand for everyone.

UPDATE 6/16/2017 from the FMCA Forum:

FMCA recently sent out notifications to a limited group of members as part of a “soft launch” or “beta test” of a wireless data plan from Verizon. FMCA had plans to share this information with the entire membership after this test period. Online news outlets heard about the plan and released information before FMCA was ready to make the announcement to all members. Response during this test period has been overwhelming, and we have had to suspend entries to the program. Rest assured that once we are ready to release information about the benefit, all members will be given the opportunity to evaluate the program and enroll if they believe it will meet their needs. Stay tuned for additional information.

I'm lucky enough to have a grandfathered unlimited data plan with AT&T and I buy unlocked phones so I don't get any AT&T crapware. I have used it as a hotspot and supposedly AT&T can detect this or so the thinking goes on various forums but I haven't had my hand slapped as yet. I do limit the hotspot use and would love to have this FMCA plan so we'll see. DW has a VZ phone but not much data on her plan.

Over the past several years there have been several attractive Verizon reseller plans that were terminated when the "customer" opened them up to more than the intended user group. In this case FMCA negotiated a deal with Verizon that was based on the assumption that some percentage of FMCA's membership would take advantage of it. This allowed Verizon to calculate its maximum financial "exposure" resulting from this "low cost" plan.

However, my understanding is that once the plan was advertised in social media, many, many people began joining FMCA for the sole purpose of signing up for it. The ~$60 annual FMCA membership fee was insufficient to detract from the attractiveness of the plan. Furthermore, FMCA apparently doesn't require any proof of motorhome ownership from members so people could join regardless of whether or not they even owned an RV, let alone a MH.

The result was that the FMCA allocation of Novatel hotspots was quickly exhausted. It will be interesting to see if the plan reopens for additional customers again anytime soon. Unless FMCA can demonstrate that it can restrict the addressable customer base to actual MH owners (or even RV owners), it is difficult to understand why Verizon would allow a reseller to undercut the parent in the marketplace. I don't want to pour cold water on this, but I wouldn't be at all surprised to see this plan dry up or be drastically changed by the time it reappears.

Here's FMCA's statement about the status of this plan. Failure to prepare for real-world conditions resulted in its demise:

06/19/2017 3:48pm ESTAs you may have heard, FMCA had been working with Verizon to offer a special rate on an unlimited wireless data plan. After the “soft launch” of this plan to a test group of FMCA members (before the planned launch to all members), Verizon called FMCA and told us to pull the offering. Verizon officials indicated that they will not be honoring any of the orders that had been entered during this test period. We are still working to see whether FMCA and Verizon can put together an advantageous plan for FMCA members, but at this point we are not certain what will result from discussions with Verizon officials.

Like many of us here, I am a member of FMCA. It appears that after the pre-release of the new FMCA/Verizon package, many new customers, not FMCA current members, were offered this deal. Current members are ticked off that they were not offered the details of this plan to the membership at large before "outsiders" were snapping the deals up.

Latest word from anothe forum is Verizon has decided not to offer it any more and has cancelled all the signups and will not honor those eitehr.. Typical of Verizon cuss-some-more non-service typed. (I have long been a "non-fan" of Verizon and their excuse for customer service).

Logged

Nothing adds excitement like something that is none of your businessMy Home is where I park it.

Latest word from anothe forum is Verizon has decided not to offer it any more and has cancelled all the signups and will not honor those eitehr.. Typical of Verizon cuss-some-more non-service typed. (I have long been a "non-fan" of Verizon and their excuse for customer service).

Instead of blaming Verizon, why not blame FMCA for not verifying that people signing up for the plan actually owned MH's? As I said in my previous post, Verizon agreed to this plan with the assumption that some percentage of FMCA's membership would want it. Instead, FMCA essentially opened it to the public by not insisting that people do something like showing that they had a registration card for a MH.

As a result, FMCA "snatched defeat from the jaws of victory" and now no one can have this benefit.